I've Seen You In a Fight (You Lost)
by Konstantya
Summary: It would be so easy, just a little tug and she would come tumbling into his arms... (AU version of my previous fic, "Your Words All Over Me," supposing that Folken really DOES drag Eries closer. Folken/Eries, in case it wasn't obvious, and admittedly a bit darker than my usual take on them.)


General Note: I'm only going to reformat my fics so much when this site is the one at fault. So if the formatting is weird, please check out my profile for more info. Thank you.

A/N: This fic literally picks up in the middle of the original fic, so if you aren't familiar with Your Words All Over Me you _will_ be lost. Also, **WARNING** for make-outs of dubious (if not outright nonexistent) consent. (Idk, man, this took a turn for the dark and vaguely kinky while writing it.)

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 **I've Seen You In a Fight (You Lost)**

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For an ungentlemanly instant, he had the insane urge to drag her closer. It would be so easy, just a little tug and she would come tumbling into his arms—

So he did. And so _she_ did.

Her breath caught, her eyes went wide, and she was about to say something—perhaps berate him, perhaps shout for help—but he didn't give her the chance. His lips fell on hers, muffling her protests, and his right arm wrapped around her waist while his left hand buried itself in her hair, holding her head to his. She struggled against him, futilely so, and all it did was make him want to pull her even closer. He tilted her head, slipping his tongue into her mouth, and he felt her freeze against him at the contact, her hands ceasing their fight against his chest out of pure shock, he suspected.

But then…even more remarkably…she seemed to start responding to him. Her mouth moved slowly, tentatively against his, and the lines of her body relaxed, pressing pliantly into him. Folken almost groaned and resisted the urge to push her against the bookshelf, instead simply reveling in the feel of her, the taste of her. She clearly wasn't very practiced in the art of kissing, but what she lacked in skill she made up for in passion, and when he finally pulled away, she actually seemed a little reluctant to let him go. She was breathing heavily, leaning into him as if she needed the support, her eyes still focused on his lips—and Folken couldn't help himself: He bent his head and captured her mouth again. This time she actually lifted her chin to meet him.

After a moment, she seemed to get ahold of herself, for she suddenly—with surprising strength—managed to wrench herself away. She stood a couple steps away, staring up at him, her chest heaving, her cheeks flushed, her lips red and swollen, and her eyes veritably on _fire_. She was so upset she was visibly shaking, her hands balled into uncharacteristic fists at her sides, and for a moment, Folken had to wonder if he'd ever seen anything so glorious.

"How…how _dare_ you," she managed, low and livid. "How _dare_ you take advantage of me like that."

"Funny," he said, admittedly rather flippantly, "you didn't seem to be complaining all that much."

Again, she tried to slap him. This time he let her. He deserved it, after that.

He brought his head back around, the side of his face stinging from her unexpectedly sharp strike, and the pain only seemed to ignite his arousal even more. There was the fleeting realization that there was something very wrong with him, but it wasn't quite enough to prevent him from what he did next: "Gods, you're magnificent," he breathed, and then he grabbed her and kissed her again.

She fought him more fiercely this time around, her movements panicky, her muffled cries shrill, and he broke away from her mouth to bury his lips contritely in her hair, feeling all the world like some monster. Her heart fluttered wildly against his chest, her breath came in frightened gasps, and worst of all, he couldn't seem to let go of her. It had been so long, and _gods_ , he was so lonely, but that was _no excuse_ —

"Please," he rasped against her ear. He closed his eyes against himself, desperate and drowning. "Hit me, punish me, _please."_ Please, he'd done so many terrible things, and he'd do so many more, and sometimes he downright _hated_ himself—

The library door opened. Almost as if a switch had been thrown, Folken released her and stepped back at the noise. Eries swayed a little, almost as if she'd started to go a little weak in the knees, and stared up at him, still flushed, her pale eyebrows furrowed in a combination of alarm and confusion. Folken stared impassively back and wished he was a decent enough man to apologize for what he'd just done.

"Princess?" a page called. "Princess Eries?"

Eries broke the gaze and cleared her throat. "Yes?" she called back, and only the closest listener would have heard the slight waver in her voice.

After a short moment, the page appeared at the end of the aisle, a young man with sandy brown hair. He bowed. "Excuse me, your highness, but your father wishes to speak with you."

She looked at the boy almost dumbly, apparently still trying to regain her composure. Her cheeks, Folken noticed, hadn't entirely lost their redness. Even so, she blinked and quickly recovered. "Of course," she said. She smoothed her hands down the front of her skirt. "Of course," she said again.

The page threw a curious glance between her and Folken, belatedly bowing to him as well, but then Eries was walking toward the boy, calm and cool as ever.

"Good day, Princess," Folken called, just before she disappeared from sight. A part of him hated how mocking the words must have sounded, but to not bid her farewell at all would have aroused the page's suspicions even more. Idly, he wondered why she hadn't enlisted the boy's help, or why she wasn't running out of the room and calling for guards this very instant. Surely an assault on a member of the royal family—whether by a high-ranking foreign dignitary or not—was grounds for _some_ sort of censure.

At the words, she turned her head over her shoulder to look back at him, her eyes almost luminous with apprehension (and something else?)—but then she turned right back around. The page fell in step beside her, and she walked out of the room without another word.

Folken watched her go, waiting for the library door to reverberate shut once again, and then turned back to the shelf in front of him. He needed a book. Reading would calm his mind. But try as he might, he couldn't make himself focus on any of the words in the volume he pulled down. Instead, he kept going over the incident that had just happened with the Second Princess.

It was stupid. Stupid and despicable and the sort of behavior he should have grown out of, by now. Never mind how pleasant she'd felt, and how passionate she'd turned out to be underneath that placid exterior of hers. Folken was tempted to think that had been the most rewarding part of it all—how thoroughly _undone_ she'd looked. Her eyes wide and flashing, her cheeks bright with color, her entire body trembling…

His fingers had contracted slightly, wrinkling the page, and upon noticing this, he frowned and smoothed it out.

It had also been entirely uncalled for, entirely unsolicited. There was no forgetting that. The whole affair—from the very moment he'd grabbed her hand to keep her from leaving—had been selfish and perverse, plain and simple. Sometimes it really did make him sick, to know that he'd become the sort of person who could so fervently claim propriety one minute and then so casually discard it the next. Yesterday it had been the destruction of his home country, and today it was a physical assault on a princess, and what—pray tell—would it be tomorrow?

He let his mouth tighten subtly in a small grimace. Perhaps it was even a wince.

Escaflowne. They needed Escaflowne. It was as much a matter of his _own_ salvation as it was the world's, at this point.

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A/N: I'm blaming Casa Circe for this, as her recent little Merlandau AU scenarios kind of made me stop and go, "Hey, maybe I should get back to my _own_ AU scenario!" pfft.

I've had this idea pretty much since I wrote Your Words All Over Me, but never got very far with it, mostly because I couldn't decide whether I wanted to use Folken or Eries as the POV character. (Using Eries would have meant more mystery behind Folken's actions, plus I could have explored her panicked "OMG, WTFWTFWTF" reaction, but things just seemed to flow better with Folken, so Folken it was.) Originally I meant it to be a bit more sexy than angsty (like, "Ooh, he drags her closer and then library kissytimes~!" ;DDD), but, well, it's _Folken_ , and as I mentioned above, it ended up taking a distinct turn for the dark and fucked up.

Obviously the rest of the arc would play out differently, if we follow the events of this fic, but I can't say I'm interested in exploring such a thing, so don't expect anything more for this weird AU. It was just a little "what-if" scenario I wanted to get out of my head, and I did, so there. XP

Lastly (for all three of you who might still be interested, ahahaha), I have _not_ abandoned the Driving Circles Around Me arc. It's just that the last fic has a significantly different tone, compared to the rest, and as such it's a little hard to get into, writing-wise. (Well, and then I got distracted rewriting a swashbuckling YA historical romance novel. Ask me about it! /shameless plug)

Anyway, yeah, haven't given up on the Folken/Eries arc, and thanks for reading!


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